AMPAS has announced a major change for next year's Oscars: a ten-film Best Picture race:

"After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year," said academy President Sid Ganis. "The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009.

"Having 10 best picture nominees is going [to] allow academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize, Ganis added. "I can't wait to see what that list of ten looks like when the nominees are announced in February."

Translation: A Best Picture nomination is about to mean even less than it ever has! Even more shitty films will make the cut than already do! We have to do this because the ratings continue to suck and so we've got to find a way to work in more crappy-but-populist movies so people who turn up their noses at arty films can feel included!

Granted, this might mean one or two truly deserving films that normally would fall just outside the top five favorites sneaks in, but is such a diluted field really worth it just for that? Also, the percentage of dull and/or dumb junk I'm going to have to watch if I want keep up my streak of seeing all the Best Picture nominees in time for the telecast just went up. Damn.

Thoughts?

I've been a bad fangirl: as of last night, three Half-Blood Prince trailers have gone by without me posting them. Let's catch up, shall we?

First, the brand new full-length trailer. I'm embedding for ease, but as always I highly recommend a direct download for quality's sake. You can find it in every format imaginable here.






And then we have the IMAX trailer:






And the international trailer:




( Spoilery reaction within. )

I am pleased as punch to read that Friday Night Lights has been renewed. 26 episodes! Two more years of Coach and Mrs. Coach (and hopefully Landry)!

Is anyone else still watching? I know a lot of people were put off by a lot of season two, but season three was pretty damn great. In fact, I think I'll go set my TiVo to record the rest of the NBC re-airings right now.

Congratulations to sarmoti, the winner of the Oscar pool with a very impressive final score of 20 out of 24! You've got 45 seconds to make your speech before you're played off the stage.

Being ever so sportswomanlike and counting myself out of the contest (coughpulleda19cough), runners up were kaytethinks with 17 correct guesses and easterkat with 16. Should sarmoti not be able to fulfill her very important duties as winner, y'all are next in line.

Interestingly, everyone got it right in two categories: Supporting Actor (Heath Ledger) and Animated Feature (WALL-E). Everyone was wrong in one, which makes sense as it was the biggest upset of the night: Foreign Language Film (Departures). ragdoll was the only one to correctly choose the winner in Documentary Short (Smile Pinki).

That was fun. Think I'll make this an annual tradition. So, until next year, then!

( Proceeding in the spirit of Tigger. )

Pool winner to come after I've slept and tabulated. Good night!

First, if you're participating in the pool, make sure you've voted in all 24 categories. No, you can't try to increase your accuracy by pretending that the shorts categories don't exist. Also note that because LiveJournal polls top out at 15 questions each, there are actually two separate polls in the post, one right after each other. If you filled out multiple categories but only clicked one button, only some of your choices recorded. You can go back and edit your responses right up until I close the poll before the telecast starts tomorrow night.

( So, these are my predictions. )

See you back here tomorrow for the liveblog!

My Oscar picks are forthcoming, but first I wanted to give anyone interested in playing along with me a chance to jump in my little pool. I'll post the winner's username on Monday. Given how few people seem to be excited about the awards this year, your chances of earning bragging rights are really good. So get to clicking!

(Note that there are two separate polls. Please vote in all 24 categories.)

( Part 1 )
( Part 2 )